Toward Decentering the New Testament: A Reintroduction Paperback – August 21, 2018

This book greatly influenced and helped shape my theology on Jesus and NT. It is both welcoming and challenging, and provides a decentering lens that allows the reader to disconnect from previous flawed assumptions and theology. There is no doubt that the church has been hijacked and negatively rebranded by modern day Pharisees, and based on faulty theology. We can rebuild with the flawed bricks from the previous structure, or we can rebuild with new bricks. "Towards Decentering the New Testament" introduces the church to the "brick" that Jesus provided, and upon which we can build His Ekklessia, so it can faithfully live and carry out His vision for humanity. This book is a must read and an important weapon that should be in every believer's arsenal. Knowledge equips!

This book is required reading for a graduate school class I'm enrolled in. The first half of the book was an amazing view into the perspective of another (I'm a middle class white woman). I couldn't put it down. I'm enjoying the rest of the book and it's commentary on the New Testament books. I appreciate the questions that encourage me to think of the Biblical text from a different point of view. It's an engaging book that I recommend to anyone who will listen.

I used the book to expand my interpretive view beyond my cultural setting.

I like that this is one of the only books I have that has something on the entire New Testament (not just Gospels) and isn't 4 inches thick. Mitzi J. Smith gives me a lot of new ideas for "old" passages of scripture. I applaud her hard work and her effort to make scripture relevant to "normal" not super duper perfect people who love Jesus and want to serve him well.

I thought this book did a good job of connecting the New Testament to the lived realities of students of the Bible that are from minority communities. I especially appreciated some of the material that connected the context of Scripture to contemporary issues that can cause the text to come alive in different ways and also to help us see our own context from a thoughtful biblical perspective.

A very useful introductory text to the study of the New Testament/Christian Scripture — a right balance of interpretative issues, theological challenges, and practical insights that allows students to be more interested and excited about these ancients texts that remain alive in the present.

I never write reviews, so know that. This book is really disappointing. I wanted to get a refund, but I'm too late. It's so amateurish. I expected more. These two (authors) might be scholars, but they seem very young - wanting to mention all the right things (the Jesus Seminar) and cover all the hot buttons (colonialism, empire, racism, misogyny, etc.) but you have to do more than just sprinkle in those words. In all fairness, I've only read the first few chapters, but I don't know if I will continue. Sorry. I really wanted to like this one.

I really wanted to like this text. The strength lies in the first two sections and the summaries on John’s Gospel and Epistle to Romans. The other summaries seemed to fall short of what the introduction promised in terms of focusing on the NT from an intersectional minority lens.